According to Geoff Portass in the impressively long making-of documentary Leviathan: The Story of Hellraiser and Hellbound: Hellraiser II, the "birth of Frank" sequence almost didn't happen. The initial approach of the financiers was to treat the project like a cult object. One that, on the strength of Clive Barker's literary reputation, would prove a safe investment. However, after the backers obtained a post-production cut of the movie, they liked what they saw. And so they smartly threw more money at the film. Ultimately, a good chunk of that money went into the "birth of Frank" sequence. The original cut of the film went something like this: clumsy Larry slices his hand open, the camera cuts away, and bam: Julia finds skinless Frank in the attic. This extra dough allowed Keen and a small team to bring to life the nasty stuff that took place during that cut. In the script, as written, the idea was that Frank, or what was left of Frank, had been splattered all over the walls and dried up over time. As scripted, the husk of Frank was supposed to materialize out of a wall and start talking. The original plan was to accomplish this with animatronics. The team even built a cable-controlled lip-synching puppet. However, according to makeup crew member Cliff Wallace, the puppet proved "too complicated for its own good." Instinctually, Keen knew something was missing from the birth sequence. Over the course of principal photography, "the film had become something else." And the dry birth, as scripted, just "wasn't visceral" enough. As a result, the team scrapped the idea of dusty Frank in favor of a wetter approach. One that, according to Barker, Keen had conceptually wanted to do for a very long time: a living corpse reconstituting itself from the ground up. "I found it interesting to start with the bare bones and work up to something quite skinny but definitely alive," recalls Keen in Fangoria #66. "A total reversal to the usual effect where you're making someone decompose." The realized birthing sequence is an entirely in-camera effect, shot on a stage in South London well after principal photography had wrapped. The re-constituted attic was, in fact, the only part of the film shot in a studio. Where, helpfully, the crew had the luxury of a raised stage. This allowed for the effects team to operate the puppets and pumps from underneath the floor.

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